I have said it before, and I will say it again.
I like guns.
Hunting isn’t my thing but I like going to a range or up in the mountains and shooting guns.
But like I also said 18-months ago, I was very unsettled about having guns in my home.
Especially after losing Matthew.
My husband has a concealed carry permit and he felt strongly about having a gun on him and in our home, but I felt very torn.
Our compromise was a gun safe.
Which worked.
Until it didn’t.
My husband inevitably had human error occur and after he unloaded and holstered it, he got distracted by one of the billion things we have going on in our lives and home and it wasn’t locked up.
And I walked into a room to see my toddler, my sweet little Butterlump, holding a gun.
In his hands.
Playing with it.
The gun wasn’t loaded and it was not where you would think a toddler could access but Butterlump has been getting into things that are unbelievable. They should change the term from childproofing to Butterlump proofing, because he takes it to another level.
Still.
When I saw him my heart stopped.
Then it exploded.
And a million “WHAT IF’s” ran through my head.
I called my husband.
I was NOT happy*.
And even though the gun was empty, and the safety was on, and as he put it “no way he could have hurt himself” there is just NO FREAKING WAY I can forget or unsee that or feel good about the situation.
My enjoyment of shooting is not worth the chance that something could happen. It’s not worth what I went through when I saw him and the fear I felt. I can go get a gun and travel to a range to have fun and shoot. My husband can prep his guns where he’s storing them and take the boys up in the mountains with the family when we go to shoot at targets. I can live with the very small chance that a situation will arise to warrant gun use to defend hearth and home much better than I can live with the other possibilities in this situation.
I am not making a pro or anti gun statement here.
I am not telling anyone what to or not do.
I am just telling you what I can and can’t do.
And having a gun in my home isn’t working for me anymore.
So.
Even though I still like guns, my family will still shoot guns, be educated about guns and fire arm safety (because I think it’s important), my husband was understanding and the guns are now out of the house and stored elsewhere where there are no children to worry about.
And my peace of mind has returned.
*understatement of the year, people
Wow. I almost burst into tears just reading this, I can’t imagine what it was like to see that. I am personally pretty anti-guns in the home, but I know some people are comfortable with it. I’m glad you are comfortable again.
In the car now?
That would be a no. I’d rather not state the location on the internet but let’s just say it is a secure area where there are no kiddies around. ;)
I think that’s really great. It seems to me that part of a parent’s job is to put their kids’ better interests above their own.
Good on you.
So, so scary.
It is good that you were able to find a place outside of your home to store them, so that you can still enjoy using them without the worry.
I’m glad you moved it/them. I’m not anti-gun, but after going to my daughter’s best friend’s funeral, I’m all about them not being in homes with kids. She shot herself in her head. She was only 14. It was her father’s service revolver “safely” put away.
They say that a teenagers brain basically rearranges itself in its development. There’s just not a whole lot of totally logical thought going on in there because developmentally their brain needs to mature.
So between toddlers and teens in your home…YAY Loralee!
ps: Aren’t I just the bluebird of happiness tonight! Sorry! Her death effed me up big time.
Oh, hon. I am so very, very, very sorry about your daughter’s friend. How horrible for everyone. You don’t have to apologize, I am sure it has affected those close to her a lot. You are very human in your reaction. xoxoxoxo
Oi guns. Just such a hot button issue that really gets under people’s skin. And that’s here in Canada. Its FAR more prevalent in the States, but I think it would scare the crap out of anyone to find their toddler playing with a gun, loaded or not.
Personally, I’m dangerously close to anti gun. That said, I grew up in a rural area, where rifles are common, and I’m one hell of a good shot. But they’re common for hunting and shooting at targets, or at an animal that is threatening a farmer’s livelihood and that’s all they ever used for. This tends to mean they’re not kept in the house (why would they need to be?), and they’re definitely not kept loaded.
I do not like regular citizens carrying concealed at all times. I think its just begging for trouble, and it’d be hard to convince me otherwise. Why in the world does a woman need a gun in her purse when living in suburbia? I’ve just heard too many stories of it ending badly.
So I guess I’m closer to pro-shotgun and anti-handgun (for civilians) and I’m definitely against guns being unlocked around children. Do cops need to carry? Absolutely. But if a civilian is better armed that a police officer? Something is wrong with that picture, in my mind.
It is a hot button issue, indeed.
I am not certain that our police are outgunned by civilians? (I am aware that they absolutely can be, but I think that is more the criminal element that are not usually gaining those legally anyway. ;) )
THAT SAID…I’m just talking from things I’ve looked at and conversations. I have no hard data. But I really don’t think your average, law-abiding, gun carrying civilian out arms the police.
(Anyone having any data can totally chime in here…)
My marriage ended the day my husband gave our son a gun and said “Shoot Mommy.” Our son was three. He is forty now, yet very few days have gone by that I haven’t thought about the hell he would have lived through if he’d done as his father told him to do. My husband was an emotionally scarred Vietnam vet, but some things can not be glossed over or excused. I have never had a gun in my home since that day.
On a lighter (or maybe just different) note, I inspected thousands of homes during my career as a termite inspector. Because my inspections were provided during real estate transactions, many of those homes were vacant. Some interesting facts I noted: A lot of people forget to check the attic when they’re packing for a move. The most common items they leave behind in those attics: Christmas decorations. The second most common: guns and ammo. My theory is that they move the guns to the attics when they recognize them as a threat to their toddlers.
I don’t even have words for that. What you must have gone through. I am so sorry. xoxoxo
OH OH OH. I feel like my heart stopped beating. OH. SHIVER. OH.
Heart stopping is a totally accurate term. My chest actually HURT.
Your post included two very powerful words…”human error”, which is something that can happen to ANYBODY with absolute and catastrophic consequences. I am not anti-gun at all, we have always had guns in our home. And even with the most sophisticated and thought-out plan of safely storing and handling them, we have still just been plain lucky.
YUP.
I think if we had firearms that stayed locked up most of the time, I would feel much more comfortable. But, this is a gun that comes in and out of the safe twice a day and as I saw first hand…it can be left out unloaded. Or worse. It’s human to make mistakes. NO ONE can be 100% all the time.
I am armed, or have a weapon close to hand at all times. I cannot imagine not having access to weapons in our home. While I totally respect your decision, for me, it’s no different than removing all the electrical outlets, no more knives, no plastic bags, or D-con, no matches or BBQ lighters, or any of a thousand other ways that tragedy can strike. For me it’s just a constant awareness and perpetual state of mind about my weapons. Which ones? Where are they? Loaded? Ammo where? etc. When kids show up here, I make a sweep in front of the little walking, talking accidents, and everything is locked up. It’s just a habit I guess. In our country today we are almost 10 times more likely to be a victim of an armed assault than we are to have our house burn down. But we all have fire insurance…right? That’s how I see weapons, attempted armed assault insurance. Bottom line though is that I am so happy Butterlump is ok. :-)
Thanks, friend. You know that I completely respect you and your opinions. I did have them for a long time but at the end of the day my little one had a gun and the nozzle was pointed at his face. I just…I am not that brave. I would rather risk home invasion. (Note: I do live in literally the safest metro area in the nation. Well, we’re number 2 this year, but usually we top the list: http://news.hjnews.com/news/article_7e8e5b2e-1888-11e0-bd6c-001cc4c03286.html) It makes the risk seem much more liveable vs. what I walked in on, you know?
This was the last day I left the front door unlocked, and didn’t have a gun right there. This happened just down the street from our house and we knew some of the victims. It changed my way of thinking that “It will never happen around here.”
http://havasunews.com/articles/2010/08/30/news/doc4c7bc69e1ca40336701400.txt
OHMYGOD. What a heart-stopping experience! I’m pro-guns myself (your entry’s timing is an interesting coincidence, considering my post this morning) but I think if a similar situation happened to me I’d be strongly in favor of removing the guns from the house, too. Now that our kids are grown and out of the house, I worry much less (and we didn’t have the arsenal we do now, when they were little). But I still make sure the gun safe is locked tight every morning before I go to work.
I’m SO GLAD everything’s okay.
It’s a weird position to be in: “pro gun” but I don’t want them here anymore. I wonder if there is a third category? ;)
$good article you
I’m glad you are comfortable with the decision you’ve made and are sure it’s best for your family. I think educated decisions like this are important.
I’m also VERY glad that you will still be educating your children on firearms and their proper use. My feeling is that, whether we have guns in our home or not (we do, but they rarely come out), there’s always the chance of my children going to someone ELSE’S home and coming across a gun. I feel the best way to safeguard against “look what my daddy has” accidents is for my children to know guns, to understand them, to not have them be a forbidden fruit, and for them to respect them as deadly. My kids will be learning to shoot as soon as they’re old enough to be on a range. They’re allowed to see Daddy’s gun any time they want to by asking him (so it’s never something they have to sneak). And I’m hoping (all but praying, really) those decisions will also be enough to keep them safe in the homes of other people, who may or may not be as careful and cautious as we are about gun ownership.
<3
I am a firm, strong, and adamant believer in gun education. HUGE TIME. For those very reasons.
What a great comment!
Interesting comments, you have a very reasoned readership. I think you’ve done it right – it’s not a matter of pro gun or anti gun as your opinion of the tool hasn’t changed, just what the appropriate storage and handling rules are. Good for you. You don’t get very many mistakes with a firearm. When the children are old enough and educated enough you can move them back to the safe if you want. Better to err or the side of safety.
…although I probably wouldn’t advertise on the internet that I just disarmed myself.
I will put this on this list of things I probably should not have put online. (I will spare you from the details of THAT little list.)
I love my readers. Very reasoned and civil group.
http://www.gunvault.com/
Not trying to plug them but it’s a good solution….IF the gun owner is responsible enough to use it. Immediate access to a loaded weapon is something that I use every day…this is the best solution I’ve personally used.
Thanks for the link.
It’s quicker access (And a hell of a nice product. You’re lucky to have one.) but I don’t think it’s different in concept/application than the gun vault we already have. Getting it in and out every day, he left it out and my kid got into it. Human error is the issue vs. what vault, you know?
Just to add a little light-heartedness, if you are up for it……Loralee….Just wait till he takes your car out for the evening without permission…You have Soooooo many heart stopping moments ahead of you!!! And yes, he WILL survive them… the question is…will you(or I? Or any other parent of a curious child…..) Yes, I believe we will!
My eldest drives in 8 months.
I suddenly feel like curling in the fetal position and throwing chocolate at myself. UGH…
Oh, Wow. Not sure I could unsee that, either. Glad that everyone is okay and that you and your husband could work out a solution that works for everyone.
Kevin turns 16 in less than a month, Loralee. And you know what? Hubs and he have been conspiring to put him in a MOTORCYCLE training class.
Heart stoppage, indeed.
From The Firearms Tutorial @ library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/GUNS/GUNSTAT.html
“Firearms injuries are the second leading cause of non-natural death in childhood and adolescence. (CDC, 2004) Accidental shooting deaths are most commonly associated with one or more children playing with a gun they found in the home. (Choi, et al, 1994) The person pulling the trigger is a friend, family member, or the victim. (Harruff, 1992) In the period from 1979 to 2000, accidental firearms deaths involving children declined in the U.S., aided by child access prevention laws and felony prosecution of offenders. (Hepburn et al, 2006) A study of nonnatural deaths in a large American city revealed that half of such deaths in persons from 10 to 19 years of age were due to homicide, and firearms were involved in 88% of them. (Heninger and Hanzlick, 2008)
Another study showed that two-thirds of accidental firearms injuries occured in the home, and one-third involved children under 15. 45% were self-inflicted, and 16% occurred when children were playing with guns. (Morrow and Hudson, 1986) A study from 1991-2000 showed that twice as many people died from unintentional firearm injuries in states in the U.S. where firearm owners were more likely to store their firearms loaded. (Miller, et al, 2005)
The issue of “home defense” or protection against intruders or assailants may well be misrepresented. A study of 626 shootings in or around a residence in three U.S. cities revealed that, for every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides (Kellermann et al, 1998). Over 50% of all households in the U.S. admit to having firearms (Nelson et al, 1987). In another study, regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and suicide in the home (Dahlberg, Ikeda and Kresnow, 2004). Persons who own a gun and who engage in abuse of intimate partners such as a spouse are more likely to use a gun to threaten their intimate partner. (Rothman et al, 2005). Individuals in possession of a gun at the time of an assault are 4.46 times more likely to be shot in the assault than persons not in possession (Branas et al, 2009). It would appear that, rather than beign used for defense, most of these weapons inflict injuries on the owners and their families.
Hunting accidents with firearms, despite the large gun ownership in the U.S. and numerous game seasons in most states, remain relatively rare and do not appear to be increasing. (Huiras, et al, 1990)”
For all of you that don’t look at the statistics…
I knew (ish) the stats on home invasion but I didn’t know that it was the second leading cause of non-natural death with kids. Oy.
I am a super huge fan of doing what is best for your and your family. And it looks like you have done just that.
Accidental deaths by means of firearm in children under the age of 14 is under 100/year. Yes, even one is a tragedy. One accidental death – by ANY means – is a tragedy. Injuries were well under 10,000.
Bikes caused, in 2003 I think it was, roughly 512,000 deaths and injuries. Many of them children. In 1997, 225 children ages 14 and under died in bicycle-related crashes.
In 1998, nearly 362,000 children ages 14 and under were treated in hospital emergency rooms for bicycle-related injuries.
I guess bikes are out too?
To get the stats to look scary, the anti-civil rights lobby usually includes “children” up to the age of 19, and I have seen as old as 25. In other words, they have to include those most likely to be in gangs. You rarely see the death and injuries that were directly related to criminal activity broken out. Likewise the “shot by someone they know” is most often a known member of a rival gang, not your next door neighbor or family member.
EDUCATION is the key. A few months before my dad died I asked him when he started me shooting. He said “Oh, about the time you could walk.” I don’t remember back that far, but I do have a memory of when I was about 4 of being out with him and my brothers at a quarry shooting. Me prone, the rifle resting on a sand bag, my dad laying next to me “helping” me aim (actually doing most of the aiming). Our guns at home were in an open rack, cartridges both in the drawer of it and on closet shelves. And we all knew that dad kept his pistol in his sock drawer. Loaded. Funny thing that…neither we nor our friends ever played with them. We knew we could take them down and look at them, but that they were not toys. And that we would get to go out and shoot at least once a month.
Of course, we also had our BB guns and pellet guns for shooting the little plastic army men, flies, and june bugs.
I hit “enter” too soon. I guess we should all be like these guys:
Joe, That sucked. :-) I don’t know if I can “unsee” that.
When I was 14 a friend of mine who was also 14 at a party and the boy throwing a party picked up his dad’s gun and pointed it at her. I wasn’t there but from what I hear she laughed — she wasn’t scared. She knew it was unloaded. The boy pointing the gun knew it was unloaded, too, see, because the guns at that house were NEVER left out if they were loaded. His parents were responsible gun owners, after all. In fact of course they’d taught the boy never to point guns at people, but his friends had asked to see the gun, and his parents were in another room, and he was just goofing around, and anyway it didn’t matter, really, did it? Because it wasn’t loaded.
My friend was shot in the head, in front of several other children.
It took her a while to die.
I don’t keep guns in my house.
Well said. I’m am fine with being educated on gun use, care, safety, target practice. I think I shot my first .22 at the age of five in my Dad’s lap and was a good shot with a rifle by my teen years. That said there are no firearms permitted in my home. Chemical imbalances of the brain can be managed with meds, but I’d hate to have a very off day become my final day. it’s just not a chance i’m willing to take.
Now that is quite reasonable – you know there is something about you yourself that may endanger yourself or others. This is called being responsible.
A cousin of mine was killed by a roofing hammer, so I don’t have any hammers. My sister-in-law’s brother hanged himself, so I don’t have any rope (using the same reasoning that “someone was killed BY a gun” – putting the blame on the instrument). Does that make sense?
Cicero, in about 55 B.C, wrote something like “The sword is not a killer, it is only a tool in the hands of a killer.” About 400 years later, St. John Chrysostom expanded on that: “For men of understanding do not say that the sword is to blame for murder, nor wine for drunkenness, nor strength for outrage, nor courage for foolhardiness, but they lay the blame on those who make an improper use of the gifts which have been bestowed upon them by God, and punish them accordingly.”
Guns are like abortions to me. Unpleasant, but sometimes necessary. Also, a matter of personal choice. I wouldn’t have either, but I’m not about to deny my fellow citizens reasonable access to either.
Good for you for making the best decision for your family and good for your husband for listening and making the change that gives you all peace of mind and confidence.
http://www.kpho.com/story/16139657/police-phoenix-mom-shoots-backyard-intruder
I’m with you. We don’t keep guns in our house. Except, I never have had a gun, unless you count a BB gun when I was a kid. I don’t have one because I don’t think I could pull the trigger…and I think that’s not good if you have a gun. And we live in our family with the impact of what “human error” can do. One nephew was fiddling around with a gun inside his home while the other nephew was feeding the dog outside. The gun “accidentally” fired. It had a deer slug in it that ripped through the house wall and into the back of nephew number two. He survived but had to endure many surgeries including replacing his jaw bone. He still has pain as a result. I wish they wouldn’t have had a gun in their home.
Thank you for an insightful post.